BIO

Nicola Cristante is a guitarist and composer.  As a young child in his native town of Venice, Italy, he picked up the guitar and began to teach himself how to play.  In his teens he pursued rock and the blues playing in local clubs.  He continued to take his growing skills seriously and went to a conservatory to refine his abilities.

Rejecting the rigidity of classical music he turned his attention to Jazz enjoying the freedom within the structure.  Since then his primary focus has been on Jazz although he still enjoys playing blues, funk and the occassional rock song.

Nicola's long musical career has taken him all over the world teaching workshops at a conservatory in Kenya to co-founding the only live Jazz Club in Venice, Italy:  The Venice Jazz Club.  He is a teacher, mentor and workshop leader.

He has collaborated with a long list of artists from all over the world, written articles for "Music Instruments" magazine as well as being the focus of a feature article in "Jazz Magazine".  He has created orginal music for the Warner Chappell Music Italian SPA label and has released multiple CDs.  His CD, "Quintessenze" can be found on Amazon.com and was created in collaboration with Gianni Anchored (sax), Danilo Gallo (bass), Aljosa Jeric (drums), Ivan Tibolla (piano) and Fabio Lazzarin (tabla). 

In 2017 he will be recording two CDs from two separate projects.  One is an African Fusion Jazz project and the other comprises jazz standards with arrangements by Mr. Cristante along with original jazz composions.